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EDITORS’ NOTES

A golden-era favorite who continues to deliver impressive new music, New York legend and Diggin in the Crates representative OC is back with another outstanding collabo album (following his recent project Oasis with AG). This time around, he hooks up with Apollo Brown, a Michigan-based producer who's been bubbling up over the last few years, signed to Mello Music, and working with acts like Big Pooh, Oddisee, Boog Brown, Black Milk, and MED, among others. His classically minded beat style perfectly complements OC's bold and wordy flow, overflowing with chunky beats and soulful, midtempo samples. Devoid of guest appearances, Trophies is a near-perfect example of the recently resurgent one-rapper/one-producer formula. It's also proof positive that OC hasn't lost a step, more than 20 years after his debut. Whether you're an old-school D.I.T.C. fan or just down with quality storytelling and dope, loop-driven tracks, this comes highly recommended. Check out "The Formula," "Options," "The Pursuit," and "Caught Up."

Trophies

EDITORS’ NOTES

A golden-era favorite who continues to deliver impressive new music, New York legend and Diggin in the Crates representative OC is back with another outstanding collabo album (following his recent project Oasis with AG). This time around, he hooks up with Apollo Brown, a Michigan-based producer who's been bubbling up over the last few years, signed to Mello Music, and working with acts like Big Pooh, Oddisee, Boog Brown, Black Milk, and MED, among others. His classically minded beat style perfectly complements OC's bold and wordy flow, overflowing with chunky beats and soulful, midtempo samples. Devoid of guest appearances, Trophies is a near-perfect example of the recently resurgent one-rapper/one-producer formula. It's also proof positive that OC hasn't lost a step, more than 20 years after his debut. Whether you're an old-school D.I.T.C. fan or just down with quality storytelling and dope, loop-driven tracks, this comes highly recommended. Check out "The Formula," "Options," "The Pursuit," and "Caught Up."

TITLE

TIME

Trophies

OC & Apollo Brown

0:39

The Pursuit

OC & Apollo Brown

3:55

Prove Me Wrong

OC & Apollo Brown

3:57

Nautica

OC & Apollo Brown

3:55

Anotha One

OC & Apollo Brown

4:18

Disclaimer

OC & Apollo Brown

2:48

We The People

OC & Apollo Brown

4:11

Signs

OC & Apollo Brown

2:00

The First 48

OC & Apollo Brown

4:03

Angels Sing

OC & Apollo Brown

4:02

Just Walk

OC & Apollo Brown

4:10

The Formula

OC & Apollo Brown

3:49

People's Champ

OC & Apollo Brown

4:08

Options

OC & Apollo Brown

3:10

Caught Up

OC & Apollo Brown

3:39

Fantastic

OC & Apollo Brown

2:13

16 Songs, 54 Minutes

℗ 2012 Mello Music Group

About Apollo Brown

Hailing from the West Michigan town of Grand Rapids, Apollo Brown is a hip-hop producer working out of Detroit. In the tradition of left-field beatmakers like the great J Dilla and Madlib, Brown is a man of many influences, with a sound that owes as much to the yacht rock of Seals & Crofts as it does to classic R&B, pulling from all corners of the music world to craft beats that are as interesting musically as they are rhythmically. While Brown started making beats as a bedroom producer in 1996, it wasn't until he moved to Detroit and became part of the city's hip-hop scene that he really began to make a name for himself with his production skills on his first pair of beat albums, 2007's Skilled Trade and 2009's Make Do. In 2009, Brown won the Detroit Red Bull Big Tune Championships, and later that year the producer signed on with Mello Music Group. The following year, Apollo released The Reset, an album of remixed tracks featuring MCs like Black Milk and Big Pooh, and followed it up later that year with Brown Study, a collaboration with Boog Brown. Apollo Brown returned with another pair of albums in 2011, the instrumental Clouds and the Hassaan Mackey collaboration Daily Bread. Keeping up his prolific streak, two collaborations followed in 2012, Trophies, featuring OC, and Dice Game, a team-up with Detroit rapper Guilty Simpson. In 2015, he issued Grandeur, a feature-filled album with Big Pooh, Oddisee, Sean Price, and many others. This was followed by 2016's The Easy Truth, a collaboration with Skyzoo. He then teamed up with Planet Asia for 2017's Anchovies. ~ Gregory Heaney